Mum's the word: 5 books for mums who love to cook

Does your mum like to cook? Or does she simply enjoy the pleasure of flicking through cookbooks dreaming of her fantasy life as a competitor on the SBS series, The Chef's Line? Here are a few of my favourite cookbooks that will make great gift ideas for Mother's Day. Earn a few extra brownie points and present mum with a book and a dish you've created from it. Oh and don't forget to wash up. She'll be even more smitten with the gift if she is not the one wearing the oven mittens.


For the mum who is dreaming of a sea change ... 
This beautiful 206-page cookbook includes stunning recipes and photographs from the region's finest producers, caterers, restaurants and cafes. Now in its third edition, this taste of the region invites readers to weave their way around three distinct routes - starting in Byron Bay then venturing south over the hills to the west and finishing up in the north of NSW. It's in your interest to get mum up to speed with Quattro's fisherman's stew or soft tacos with spiced eggplant from Zest Byron Bay. If you're feeling generous, buy mum a weekend away at the inaugural Byron Bay Fine Food and Beverage Festival on Saturday June 3.  Byron Bay: A Taste of the Region, (Nelly Le Comte and Remy Tancred, ($35 available from Beach Byron Bay).

For the love of the location shots ...

Coastline explores the legacy of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Vikings who left the gift of a 'cuisine of the sun'.  It's a book to drool over and will either be an inspiration to grab a bulb of garlic, fresh herbs and seasonal vegetables and get in the kitchen or make you want to throw in the tea towel and move to Italy. This is a beautiful book that goes a long way to show how important simplicity is with tips for mastering the "perfect pesto, best boullaibaisse, and purest paella". Flick straight to page 128 for my personal fave: cappon magro (Riviera seafood spectacular).Coastline: The Food of Mediterranean Spain, France and Italy. By Lucio Galletto and David Dale (Murdoch Books, $59.99).

Lettuce eat: for those who love to #eatclean
This is for the mum who never orders takeaway and wants a bit of inspiration in the kitchen. This book contains 100 recipes for salads, sides and dressings that will ensure she will eat well - even if she only has 20 minutes to spare. This book reflects a global trend that sees more and more individuals looking to extend their #meatfreeMondays into the busy working week. Mums who love their salads will delve into this book with gusto for quick and easy comfort food that doesn't involve loading up on carbs. Here, the comfort factor is about enjoying deeply satisfying salads as a main. Salads All Year Round, Compiled by Makkie Mulder (Murdoch Books, $35).


For those partial to fasting ...
Lee Holmes presents a simple, supportive and sustainable approach to intermittent fasting. This is the kind of book that will do wonders for mums who eat out at a lot. Fast Your Way to Wellness is based on a 500-calorie restriction for women, which helps the body shift into a fat-burning machine. Inside this practical book are tips for starting your first fast, incorporating exercise into your routine and a calorie calculator designed to help you curate your own dishes. The inclusion of a shopping list makes this book very user-friendly. Fast Your Way to Wellness: Supercharged Food (Murdoch Books, $29.99)



For the matriarch who likes to keep entertaining easy... 
This book is for mums who have mastered the classics and want to spend less time in the kitchen and more time around the table with family and friends. This will be a well thumbed-through book with recipes such as broccolini and anchovy pasta, and lamb cutlets with zucchini and quinoa salad shoehorning mum out of the food rut she's been complaining about. It's difficult to pick a favourite dish in A Simple Table but if I was pressed to, it would have to be Gran's spring chicken casserole, which is an altogether heartier dish than your mum's famed chicken soup. The fact that the author has worked as a food stylist means your mum will take her presentation up a notch. A Simple Table: Fresh and Fabulous Recipes for Every Day by Michele Cranston ($39.99, Murdoch Books). 

Five of the best places to Instagram autumn in Australia

Mt Tomah in the Blue Mountains' Botanic Garden puts on a spectacular autumn display each year. Image: Supplied

Take a swathe of perennials, a few arches of trees ablaze in copper and orange tones and throw in a few perfectly placed park benches and you have yourself a happy place. After a stroll through the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mt Tomah, you can gaze across the valley, which has pockets of vivid copper and red foliage. The hatted Tomah Gardens Restaurant is a great place to enjoy a kaleidoscope of autumn colours and enjoy all the region has to offer. Time your visit to coincide with the annual Leura Harvest festival. Click here for some Insta inspo. 

Fall's gold: Canberra turns on a riot of red, gold and yellow during autumn.

Autumn in Canberra is every bit as stunning as it looks. The beauty of doing some leaf-spotting in the national capital is that it's so easy to get amongst it. The bike lanes in Canberra are one of the best things about the city and the vast parks, nature strips and tree-lined streets make it one of the best locations to peep at #leafporn.  Book in to a Mushrooms and Minibeasts Family Walk at Canberra's Arboretum in the April school holidays, which includes a hike through the Himalayan cedar forest. See Visit Canberra for inspiration.

Treehuggers unite at Centennial Park in the centre of Sydney. Image: Chris Gleisner

The woodlands of Centennial Park in the heart of Sydney, NSW, can be easily covered on foot, skates or pushbike. Picking one must-see spot is a challenge but circumnavigate the park and you are sure to satisfy your urge for some seasonal leaf spotting. Strolling around this park is such a peaceful way to celebrate the season and bid farewell to summer. Make the most of the great outdoors in the milder weather and book in an outdoor movie at Moonlight. BYO blanket.

Moss Vale Garden is one of the jewels in the Southern Highlands' crown. Image: Destination NSW

Walk around the historic township of Moss Vale before veering off the path and finding your very own Highland hideaway. Leighton Gardens are situated in the heart of town and perfectly situated for family picnics. The best fall foliage happens at the start of the season. Visit Southern Highland Food and Wine Clusters for inspiration. One for the calendar is the Festival of the Roast Autumn Foodie Field Day at The Loch, Berrima

Wrap-up of Good Food Guide Awards 2016

The Bridge Room was named Restaurant of the Year at this week's The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2016 Awards. The restaurant, run by husband-and-wife team Ross and Sunny Lusted in Sydney's CBD, also won a coveted third hat at the awards and, in doing so, gained entry into an elite three-hat club comprising Quay, Rockpool est. 1989 and Sepia.

Les Schirato of Vittoria Coffee presents The Bridge Room's Sunny and Ross Lusted with their award.   Photo: Lucas Jarvis

The guide - the bible when it comes to restaurant ratings in Australia - also declared Pasi Petanen, of Cafe Paci in East Sydney, to be the Citi Chef of the Year, describing him as "a chef's chef and in possession of one of the most forward-thinking idiosyncratic food brains in the country".

Sydney's most anticipated opening of the year, Bennelong, housed under the soaring sails of the Sydney Opera House, also got a gong, taking out Best New Restaurant and debuting with two hats.

Pasi Petanen, of Cafe Paci, in East Sydney, named 2016 Citi Chef of the Year.     Photo: Lucas Jarvis

The shoebox-sized 22-seat Fleet Restaurant, in Brunswick Heads, on the far north coast of NSW, also gave us something to shout about, taking out Regional Restaurant of the Year, which denotes it is as a very good restaurant - especially considering the company it keeps.

In this year's guide, 100 of NSW and ACT's top eateries received a total 137 hats; of these, 36 were awarded in the regions. Interestingly, there are now more two-hatted restaurants than ever before. Chief restaurant critic of The Sydney Morning Herald, Terry Durack, says he's always more excited when the greatest amount of action comes with the one-hatted restaurants than the three hats.

Chef Peter Gilmore and team onstage with SMH chief restaurant critic, Terry Durack. Photo:  Lucas Jarvis.

"This means the quality of dining out is getting better from the ground up, not just from the top down, and that's what we're seeing reflected in the new Good Food Guide," he says.

Lauren Elridge, pastry chef at Marque, was also recognised as being one of the brightest young talents on the NSW dining scene as the fifth woman to win the Josephine Pignolet Award in its 25-year history.

The talent was more pronounced than ever this year in a dining landscape that the new editor of the Good Food Guide, Myffy Rigby, describes as "not so much competitive as collaborative".

The Ivy Ballroom was transformed for the Good Food Guide 2016 awards.     Photo: Lucas Jarvis.

"Chef collectives across all faiths have formed. It's bred a city with an irreverent streak a mile wild, seasoning Sydney with a Japanese-Italian flavour that's very often grilled over charcoal, woodfired over individual twigs and broken up with the odd bacon doughnut," she says.

The new stars on the drinks scene in the 2016 version of the guide include Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt, who won Best Bar for Monopole and Best Wine List for their CBD Restaurant, Bentley Restaurant & Bar. The latest edition of the guide also awarded Sebastian Crowther, Head Sommelier at Rockpool, the coveted title of Champagne Pol Roger Sommelier of the Year.

The teams that took out three hats in the Good Food Guide 2016.                  Photo: Lucas Jarvis.       

This year also saw the introduction of three new awards, with Best Cheap Eat going to Chaco Bar, a Japanese Grill House, and the People's Choice award going to the much-loved waterfront institution Catalina.

Rob Caslick was rightly overjoyed when he took to the stage to accept The Food for Good Award, which celebrates innovation, charity and sustainability. Caslick runs Inside Out Organic Soup Kitchen, which teaches young mothers and pregnant teens to eat well and cook for themselves, Two Good, which employs women affected by domestic violence and St Canice Rooftop Garden, run by asylum seekers providing produce to local business and the soup kitchen.

Chef Sean McConnell, of Monster Kitchen & Bar, awarded one hat in the GFG 2016.            Photo: Supplied

In other noteworthy news, Canberra finds its mojo with Monster Kitchen & Bar being awarded one hat as well as Regional Wine List of the Year while Muse Restaurant in the Hunter Valley retained its coveted two-hat status for the second year running with Troy Rhoades-Brown at the helm.

Muse Restaurant in the Hunter Valley rightfully retained its two-hat status.        Photo: Carla Grossetti 

To get the full list of winners and grinners, visit the Good Food website.  The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2016 will be available from participating newsagents and supermarkets for $10 with the newspaper on Saturday, September 12, while stocks last. It can also be purchased in selected bookshops and online at smhshop.com.au/smhgfg2016 for $24.99.

Carla Grossetti is one of 40 restaurant critics to contribute to The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide.

Cronulla plugs into the Sounds of the Suburbs

Sounds of the Suburbs returns to Cronulla for the third year in a row.                    Image: Jack Bennett Photography.

With the third annual Sounds of the Suburbs slated for September, Cronulla is well and truly plugged into the Gen Z zeitgeist for the jam-packed festival with the "warm and scuzzy vibes". 

Forget, for a moment, any visual clichés you have in mind about Cronulla.  Next, turn your back to the beach, don a colourful wristband and floppy hat and join the invading hordes at Sounds of the Suburbs, where it will be wiggle-room only in Wilbar Lane on September 27.

Sound of the Suburbs is the little laneway festival that dared to dream big.          Image: Jack Bennett Photography.

Everyone is welcome at the little laneway festival says Aaron Girgis, one of the co-founders of the music festival that showcases a growing alternative scene that has been bubbling up in Cronulla over the past decade or so.

Sounds of the Suburbs keeps the warm and scuzzy vibes alive.              Image: Jack Bennett Photography

"It's everyone's dream to start a big laneway festival isn't it? Three years ago, we were like, 'Let's do this' and we're so lucky that Sutherland Shire Council have been so super supportive and been behind the festival from day one. The community has also embraced us from the start," says Girgis.

'This is our opportunity to show the people of Sydney that there is another scene and another world that exists out here in the Sutherland Shire," he says.

Sounds of the Suburbs is one of the more intimate events on the festival circuit.                 Image: Jack Bennett Photography

Girgis and local street artist Jack Irvine are also behind Space 44, an independent gallery and creative hub that is now regarded as the community's space as much as it is their own. The pair have also teamed up with Geoff Trio and Jad Nahkle, co-owners of The Brass Monkey Cronulla and El Sol Mexican Cantina, who have been involved in the evolution of the local music scene for a decade.

A snapshot of Sounds of the Suburbs 2015.                                                   Image: Jack Bennett Photography 

It was after fielding feedback from the locals who attend their monthly exhibitions that the duo decided to stage an event that celebrates local musicians as well as international acts that will perform exclusively at the music festival.

Space 44 is on song with Cronulla's Sounds of the Suburbs festival in September.  Image: Jack Bennett Photography.

"People are starting to sit up and take notice of Cronulla. We knew after starting Space 44 that there were hundreds of people into art and boutique music and an alternative scene and we're so proud to bring some of these bands here for a big celebration," he says.

Sounds of the Suburbs is where art, music and fashion collide.                Image: Jack Bennett Photography.

At larger music festivals, 800 people might be queued to use the Portaloos. By comparison, with its at-capacity crowd of 800, Sound of the Suburbs feels more like a wild house party.

Sounds of the Suburbs is attracting party heads from all around the country.                       Photo: Jack Bennett Photography.

It's a formula the tightknit coterie of artists seem to appreciate with acts such as Brisbane indie duo Holy Holy sharing the stage with international acts such as The Garden, White Fang and The Memories presented by cult record label Burger Records and travelling all the way from Orange County in LA.

Celebrate the sunshine at Cronulla's Sounds of the Suburbs 2015.          Image: Jack Bennett Photography

With just three stages and 21 bands, the fact that the intimate festival is a nod to the Sound of the Suburbs song released by The Members in 1979 is reason enough to support Sounds of the Suburbs. "Sounds of the Suburbs has all the warm and scuzzy vibes to mark the perfect start to Australia's festival season," says Girgis.

Locals love the laidback beach vibe at Sounds of the Suburbs.               Image: Jack Bennett Photography

WHEN: September 27, 2015
WHERE: Wilbar Lane, Cronulla
DON'T MISS: The three international acts The Garden, White Fang and The Memories as well as Brisbane indie folk band, Holy Holy. I Am Apollo and hip-hop act Citizen Kay are a few of the stellar local acts on the lineup.
WHAT IT WILL COST: $65.30
PRO TIP: Catch a train to Cronulla and save your cash for beer and Mexican food from El Sol.
BUY TICKETS: www.soundsofthesuburbs.com.au
NEXT MONTH: Another sneak peek of Australian Music Week.
 
To read more of my articles visit www.carlagrossetti.com or subscribe to the Visit the Shire blog.

Sounds of the Suburbs is so intimate it has the feel of an off-the-chain house party. Image: Jack Bennett Photography.

Hunter haunt has the EXP. factor

Husband-and-wife team Frank and Emma Fawkner are forging their own path at EXP. Restaurant.

EXP. Restaurant's head chef Frank Fawkner is visibly proud of the ground he stands on. After spending the last four years working as head chef at Muse Restaurant, the ambitious young chef has taken some of what he has learnt from his friend and mentor Troy Rhoades-Brown and blended it with his own ambitions at the Oakvale Winery restaurant he opened with wife Emma in March.

Head chef Frank Fawkner is focused on giving diners a memorable EXP.erience at EXP.

The warmth that radiates from this happy couple seems to have been infused into the space and the reasons why the new eatery should be on the list of must-visit Hunter locales are many and varied: take the custom-made tables, the white-on-wood decor, the colour-coded crockery, whip-smart wine list, original artworks and general attitude of the warm and friendly staff led by restaurant manager Danielle Doffay.

Everything from the staff aprons to the bespoke plates, artworks and furniture has been well thought out.

"I feel that dining at a restaurant should be about everything - from fabulous food and wine, to the music, service, art, painting, crockery, aromas, furniture and fit-out," says Fawkner.

Frank Fawkner can be found fossicking in the vegetable patch ahead of service at EXP. 

Of course, great restaurants rely on more than just a fab fit-out and bespoke furnishings, and a quick glimpse of the menu, which is divided into Food from the Earth, Sea, Land and Sky, Cheese and Sweets, is a good starting point when it comes to understanding the EXP. factor.

Oakvale Winery has become even more of a destination with the addition of EXP.

Fawkner was part of the team led by Rhoades-Brown that helped the acclaimed restaurant achieve two-hat-status in The Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food Guide 2015. As with Muse, part of the EXP. theatre is watching the 27-year-old chef in the galley-style kitchen as he calmly presides over food from a menu that is totally responsive to the seasons.

Head chef Frank Fawkner prevails over the pass with a Zen-like calm. 

The key to the EXP. concept is authenticity, and the reason the place feels so real is that diners get a sense that the team - both front- and back-of-house - seem to genuinely love what they do. As fans of Fawkner's work at Muse will recognise, the chef's inspiration is rooted in regional produce, some of which is grown just metres from the entrance to the restaurant.

Diners are encouraged to pulverise their own herbs to add to the butter for house-made focaccia.

The first dish to arrive at our table is so fresh that it certainly enlivens and amuses our bouches. It's a mortar and pestle brimming with fresh herbs from the garden beds where Fawkner is seen fossicking ahead of service.

The just-picked herbs have been blasted with liquid nitrogen, which spills like a storm front over the rim of the mixing bowl before dissipating. It's a magical act one, scene one, as we are handed the pestle and invited to pulverise the herbs at the table, mix them with house-churned butter and then spread liberally over a fresh spongey cube of just-baked focaccia.

EXP. menu reads like a love letter to the land, with some ingredients grown metres from the restaurant door.

Like much of Fawkner's menu, the dishes are both innovative and earthy.  Fawkner takes his inspiration from the techniques he has learnt everywhere from the UK - where he worked as sous chef under Tom Aikens at Tom's Kitchen - to Australia. Fawkner describes working at Muse as a defining moment of his career, and says Rhoades-Brown was a great mentor, fast-tracking his career when he appointed him head chef in 2013.

From the earth: house-made haloumi, heirloom tomato, manzanillo olive and herbs.

While the chef is quick to pay tribute to his good friend, he says he is also thrilled to be at the helm of his own restaurant in the thick of NSW's most famous wine-producing region.

"Working at Muse was a great platform for me to develop as a chef. Being part of the team when Muse Restaurant reached two hats also gave me a hunger to find my own voice. I really look up to Troy. I aspire to be like him. He's cool, calm and humble and he's taught me everything I need to know. Where a lot of chefs might just wave you goodbye, Troy has been an open book when it comes to helping me set up EXP." he says.

From the land and sky: chorizo-spiced bacon, chickpeas, spiced broth and lemon. 

The philosophy behind EXP. is on the experience. While Fawkner and Rhoades-Brown both favour a similar contemporary style of cooking, EXP. embraces a more pared-back rustic approach, with less components on the plate. The chef also aims to give the freedom of choice back to the diner so there is no menu, no set order of dishes. Instead, the diner can curate their own adventure on a plate and choose from a range of exceptional dishes that read like a love letter to the land.

Chef's signature dish: black garlic risotto, cauliflower, pyengana cheddar and nasturium.

One of the dishes that most excites is the black garlic risotto with cauliflower, cheddar and nasturtium. It is black and white with nice fresh green leaves.

It's ham on toast, but not as you know it. with duck and macadamia on focaccia

From the Land and Sky section, the ham on toast with duck, focaccia, fig, macadamia and mizuna also tells a story about what Fawkner is about. Sweet tooths will also go nuts for the dark chocolate shell, basil parfait and passionfruit gel, basil jellies and caramelised chocolate, one of Fawkner's signature desserts at Muse.

Chef Frank Fawkner plating up with precision at the pass at EXP. Restaurant.

If you fail to snag a ticket to one of the wine events at the Hunter Valley Wine & Food Month, console yourself with a booking at EXP. 1596 Broke Rd, Pokolbin. + 61 4998 7264. If you would like to view the full program for the Hunter Valley Wine and Food Month in June, click here.

Warm blue cheese, brioche, honey and marigold falls under the Cheese heading.

Carla Grossetti was a guest of The Hunter Valley Wine Country.